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Podcast highlights:
02:30 – David’s business in summary
03:35 – Why the big payout didn’t matter
07:26 – How do you define health?
09: 34- David’s core discoveries
12:49 – Why “unlearning” is important
16:10 – Challenges of starting a team
18:04 – After-sales realization
22:27 – What’s keeping David busy
25:31 – Do THIS prior to supplementation
28:55 – The magic of breathing
33:32 – Most important takeaway
Build a business that supports the lifestyle you want with James’s personal coaching
Transcription:
James: James Schramko here. Welcome back to SuperFastBusiness.com. This is Episode 639. And today we’re chatting with David Hauser from Austin, Texas. Welcome, David.
David: Hey, James. Thanks for having me.
James: A new resident to Austin.
David: I am, just two months now after spending eight years in Las Vegas.
James: So, they’re both reasonably warm climates.
David: Yeah, they are. I grew up in New York and lived in Boston, Massachusetts, for 10 years in the freezing cold. So, I guess you could say I was quite over it.
James: Right.
So you’ve got a really interesting story, and I think one that will resonate with people who listen to SuperFastBusiness, because we’ve talked a lot on this podcast about work-life balance, having a great life, certainly success, whatever that means for the individual, where, you know, in the scale of things, there are people who are full-on workaholics, the hustle, grind, spend every second from the back seat of an Uber on your phone types right through to the fairly laid back, leveraged lifestyle types who are more interested in meditation and slower living. But we all agree, it’s nice to have some money to fuel your life, and finding that spot in the middle that’s comfortable is what I’ve been pursuing as a daily surfer.
But I think your story is quite interesting, because you started a company that you ran from zero for about 12 and a half years up to somewhere in the range of $39-million-a-year revenue. You managed to install a management team, and then sell that business to a large company, it was a software business, you had a huge payout of that, and then you walked away from it. And it seems like you’ve had a bit of a revolution, personally. I mean, you’re still a relatively young fella, in your 30’s. And you’ve probably got a different viewpoint now about life than you had through the various phases of the startup, through to the growth, through to the exit to where you’re at now. So, I think there’ll be an interesting conversation.
David’s business in summary
The business that you had was called Grasshopper. Can you just describe what that business was all about?
David: Sure, yes. So, Grasshopper, and what the company does is provide a virtual phone system for entrepreneurs. So, press one for sales, two for support, on hold music transferring, you know, all the things you’d expect from a large phone system, just totally virtual. And our goal in starting and building the business was to be able to provide a professional image for small businesses and entrepreneurs, and we served hundreds of thousands of them doing that.
And it really came from a quite simple idea of like, I just don’t want my cellphone ringing when someone’s trying to reach my business at one in the morning. It’s not very professional to pick up that phone, right, in that way. So, you know, that’s where we built it from. And just from that idea, we grew a business
James: Fantastic. A few entrants into that market, now, of course. I’m sure you saw a bit of a changing landscape over that more than a decade.
David: Yeah, for sure. I mean, we saw our competitors come and go, some stuck around, some of them went up market. I mean, we kind of stuck to our guns and served the entrepreneur and small business market one-to-10-employee companies really well, and saw great growth throughout that entire period. And then since the sale, the company’s grown tremendously, as well.
Why the big payout didn’t matter
James: You got a pretty big payday on the sale. And I think that’s certainly something to congratulate you for. But interestingly, when we were chatting about this on an earlier occasion, you weren’t so fussed about the amount. Why is that not important to you now, where it might be for others?
“We look at the amount as kind of this vanity metric.”
David: Yeah, I mean, I think we look at the amount as kind of this vanity metric where, it doesn’t really matter the amount. Like, prior to the sale, I lived a good life; after the sale, I lived a good life, right? And there was not much change between those. So, to me, the number didn’t matter. Like, I lived in a really nice house. I drove a car that I wanted, and it’s not a cheap car, but it’s not a ridiculous car, right? I have that same car today. So, it hasn’t changed. So, I think that the magnitude of dollars beyond a certain point just brings more pain and problems – managing that, dealing with it. It sounds silly, like, no one wants to complain about that, and I’m not complaining. But it’s a different set of challenges that are just not as interesting as building a business.
James: So, the focus for you was really like, if you go back to when you were in your early 20’s, I suppose you were when you started this business, would you have listened to the version of you now, saying that? Or would you say, “Get out of my way, man, I’m hustling and grinding,” like you are a hundred-hour-a-week guy.
David: I was doing a hundred hours easily, working at three, four in the morning. Horrible sleep patterns, just bad choices, bad food, bad everything.
James: Would you have listened to yourself?
David: No, right?
James: I think that’s hilarious. Because me in my 20’s, I was so driven. I had kids coming out every couple of years, new additions, the mortgage to pay. I was running the show, I knew that it was unsustainable for the long haul. But I also felt at the time that I may not have had much of a choice.
Of course, we get wiser as we get older. And I find myself in this hilarious position of coaching people who are younger than me , certainly people in their 30’s that are kicking butt in their business. We do have this conversation. I watch them actually come out the other side of it sometimes and mature up, and then we laugh about it later. But you can’t tell a young man, and I imagine, young driven females as well, not to put a sex on it, but you know, that young person in their zone. They’re pretty much going to do it anyway.
David: Yeah, I mean, I think there’s that period in time where we can do that. But there’s probably some balance between 100 and 15, right? And I think the balance is what’s important. But I mean, I was also the guy that if you told me, go to a yoga class, you know, 10 years ago, I would have said that’s silly, right? I practice yoga six days a week now. And I mean, it has changed my life significantly. And I don’t sit there and, you know, like, everyone has to meditate and things like that. For me, it had an impact on my life. And I wouldn’t have expected that 10 years ago at all.
James: Yeah, you know, it’s a recurring theme here on the show. I was speaking to Paul Jarvis on episode 618, about growth being the enemy, and how to build a company of one. And his quote that I loved was that success is personal, and you know, how much is enough. For some people, enough is different. And it’s a really interesting thing. It’s pretty much when you’ve been through it and had it all. And I have, you know, I’ve had all the fancy trimmings, and the nice things, and then I’ve pared back, and it’s not as important to me now. But I think you’d have trouble telling the old me that and believing it. I think you have to almost get there to understand it.
But you’re in the process of publishing a book, which you’re calling Unstoppable, and you’re documenting your wisdom and lessons learned. And I think that’s to help other people glean some advice from what you’ve been through, right?
David: Yeah. So, my goal in this book was, I did, I don’t want to say developed, as much as I stole a simple framework from everything I learned in business and growing a company, and this kind of framework of testing and optimization and applied this to my health, and anyone can apply it to their health journey to find the things that work for them.
How do you define health?
And I think what you referenced in terms of finding what success means, I think it’s very much similar for health. Like, the way each of us look at health and how we define being healthy is very different. What I want to get from changing my diet may be very different from you, right? My goal might be losing weight, and having less brain fog, while someone else’s goal might be gaining weight, or gaining muscle or whatever the things are. But we are all on this journey of optimization over time, and we can either make conscious decisions to do that, or we can just let it happen. And I think most of the population just lets their health happen. And that’s how we end up in bad health.
James: Well, I think all of the population lets life happen. You know, they’re following the script, you go to school, and then you go to some education beyond that, and then you get a job, and you have a mortgage and a family and a car, and then you retire, and then the government support you a little bit, because you don’t have enough. And I think you definitely flipped the script on the business, it makes sense you would flip it on the health.
Gosh, in this podcast, we’ve had people talking about DNA and meditation, and we have a pretty strong health slash life balance focus. Because I think, what’s the point of just working if you let everything else fall away, especially your health. I think some people will literally die young and unhappy, even if they’re rich.
And to pull that back into perspective, like for me, that big health revolution happened about five or six years ago. I turned into a person who surfs every day, eat much more organic whole foods. And I want to live longer, I want to look younger, I want to feel fit and fantastic. That’s my mission. And through interviewing experts, and learning from them, as you said, you’re sort of taking knowledge from all different places, and in consolidating that, you end up with your own framework.
For me, a big one was discovering that my body just didn’t love gluten. And changing that one thing fixed a lot of challenges that I was having around inflammation and pain and bloating and headaches and other things that make life a bit uncomfortable, not sleeping so well.
David’s core discoveries
So, what would be the core discoveries that you’ve had that you think go against the grain from what everyone out there is thinking?
David: Yeah, yeah, I think one is definitely diet. I’ve tried all sorts of extremes, right? So, I did conventional wisdom, low fat, you know, high-carbohydrate diet like we’re told to do. That clearly didn’t work for me. I tried full on vegan for six months, like just from day one, started like, boom. And vegetarian, keto, paleo, like all of these different things. And what I found had the most impact for me was definitely eating a high-fat, low carbohydrate diet, but heavily in vegetables, right? So, what I didn’t like about or how I felt most importantly on eating kind of a purely ketogenic diet that even deprioritizes carbohydrates and vegetables compared to like today, my plate is probably 80 percent vegetables. So that’s been most optimal for me. That’s definitely one area.
Another one is sleep. Like, we always talk about it. And you know, I made very small adjustments, but you know, made massive changes to my sleep patterns. And I mean, it sounds simple, but like going to bed between nine and 10 at night and getting up, you know, roughly when the sun rises, without an alarm clock, and getting into that pattern, it’s not easy. Especially when I was working. Previously, my hours were like, way into the night. Like, I was always a quote, unquote night person.
But you know, now I wake up feeling rested and ready for the day. And that’s what I want, right? Like, I don’t care about the number of hours of sleep. While it might be important to monitor and test and think about, I care about when I wake up, do I feel rested and ready for the day? And I want to be able to answer that question with a hell, yes.
James: Yeah, gosh, same page there. I used to think I was a night person, because I built my business between 9:30 at night and two or three in the morning on the side for a couple of years. And I got into such a strong pattern that when I did discard my job that 10 and a half years ago, I kept doing the night shift. And I’ve discovered now, if I stay up past midnight, like the great Cinderella story says, you know, my carriage turns into a pumpkin. Like, I feel like I have a hangover the next morning if I push past a comfortable zone. And switching to being productive in the morning has been a profound change.
I would challenge anyone listening to this, if you think you’re a morning person, or you think you’re a night person, try and mix it up a bit. But I suspect most people are going to be fairly productive at the beginning of their work day when they’ve got the most willpower and the most energy and the most reserves, because they’ve been restored and revitalized in their sleep, where the brains releasing all the toxins and clearing up the body and resetting you.
David: I think most importantly too, like, when people always push back and they’re like, Well, you know, at nighttime, there’s less distraction. Well, in morning time, there’s also less distraction, because most people are not up. And people always ask me like, “I need more time in the day.” I’m like, “Okay, you want the best trick or hack or way to get more time in the day? Wake up three hours early.” Right? Like, you’ll still go to bed, and you’ll just cut out some television or some useless activity at the end of the day. So just get up three hours early, and you will have three more hours that day than a regular day.
The reason why “unlearning” is important
James: You had a bit of a concept around the idea of unlearning. And I think you were quoting some well-respected authorities on that from the past. But why do you think unlearning’s important?
David: Well, I think that for my journey, it was very important. Because in business, I was willing to challenge everything and say, you know what, maybe conventional wisdom and what we’ve been told, and I should do this, or I shouldn’t do that in business is wrong, and got tremendous results from it. Right? And built this AB testing framework and the company. But in my own personal life, I was never willing to challenge that and say, you know, why is it that we’re told to eat a certain way? Why is it that we get addicted to Facebook? Like, asking these questions critically and starting to think, and unlearning conventional wisdom about everything from diet to cholesterol, and some of these other things about fat, like each of those steps along the way, for me, were very impactful. But when I step back and look at it, the most important thing was like, I put myself back into the journey of both unlearning and then learning and discovery and research. So I think that has been the most impactful out of anything.
James: Sounds like you’d be a fan of Kaizen.
David: For sure.
James: What were the big lessons in your business growth, as you were discovering this ability to optimize? Like, what are some of the things you had to unlearn in business and do differently than what you’d seen around you?
David: Yeah, I think the first was how we did marketing. And, you know, we’re talking many years ago, before there were AB testing tools. We got introduced to this concept of trusting the real data on conversion and testing compared to just guessing things, right? And I think the best example of this was, you know, my partner and I in Grasshopper never wanted to put our picture and name on the website, like as a central thing. It was always on the about page, if someone wanted to dig into it. But, you know, the marketing team said, “Okay, look, we think that people identify with this. So, we’re going to run tests.” And a test showed that the conversion was better. I didn’t like the result of the test. So, it really required me to start to think and say, Okay, if we are testing all of these things, and looking at real data, what can we do differently?
And then today, the way I apply that today is like, I think what is very interesting is applying methods and techniques from one industry to another. So, I spent a lot of time in software as a service and software businesses and online tech stuff. Applying that to a physical product retail business that is doing wholesale and distribution, I think there’s a lot that can be applied and it’s very interesting, where if I was coming from that industry, I would ignore it as something that someone else does, right? So, taking the marketing techniques we do at Grasshopper and applying them in a new industry, to me, that’s very interesting as well.
James: It certainly, is to me. It’s a technique I learned from Jay Abraham. And essentially, that’s my job description in the program that I run called SilverCircle, is cross pollinating best practice between a high-level group of entrepreneurs. And as you said, like, something that’s mundane or ordinary in software as a service industry might be revolutionary in some other industry. And you’d have to think that out there, someone has figured out a better way of doing things than the way it’s being done. And we do occasionally see new technology combined with a great idea leap forward, where they just take a concept, and then you can apply that across different industries and get a huge growth spurt. Very interesting.
Challenges of starting a team
What were some of the challenges that you had as you were installing a management team? Because I imagine starting at zero, there probably weren’t too many people in the business when you first started out, and you would have had to give up some of the tasks that only you could do, I imagine, at the beginning,
David: Yeah, yeah, we had no one. I mean, I was answering phone calls, and my business partner was answering, like, customer service phone calls, while we were trying to grow the business. So, we had no one. It took us a while to really understand what our limitations were, to get comfortable with delegation and giving up control of tasks, and doing things, moving the company from, you know, a group of doers around us, where I give someone a task, and they come back to me and say, I’ve done it, to a group of people that were more strategic thinkers, and could think critically, and, you know, add to the process and the inputs and things like that. I mean, that’s like, you know, it seems small now, but that’s probably a five-year journey.
From there, I had the realization that I hated managing people, I had probably 20 or more direct reports. Again, not scalable, not best practice in terms of number of direct reports, and I really didn’t like it. So, my goal in building a management team selfishly, was just, you know, how do I get myself doing less of the things I don’t like, right? And, we built that over time to, you know, ultimately, an amazing management team that was so much so able to run the business that at the sale of the company, my business partner and I didn’t even have to stay around, because the management team could continue to run things as they were, and then our strategic direction was no longer needed, I guess, as the new company could handle that.
James: When you sold the business, and you had to leave quickly, how did that affect your relationship with the team, and how did it affect the relationship with you and your sweetheart business that you birthed to the world?
After-sales realization
David: It was a very emotional and difficult time. And I say difficult because, you know, you’re kind of in this weird kind of balance of, you know, I got a massive amount of money, which seems like what everyone wants and what we should all be striving for. But I’ve also given up what I’ve invested 12 years or more of my life in, is my identity; people know me as the Grasshopper guy, family, friends, you know, people, so there’s an emotional side to it. And it was very instant. So, I think that was just a difficult time.
And I went back and listened to a lot of people that had gone through similar scenarios. And the one piece of advice that was common across all of them was, just slow down and don’t rush into anything. Don’t go right into something else next, I know, that’s what you want to do, and you think that that’s going to feel good, but you know, step back for a minute, and just slow down. And I’m glad that I got that advice from, you know, probably more than five people prior to the sale.
James: Yeah, I got the same advice from someone. I actually sold a couple of my business units. And there was a pretty successful entrepreneur in Australia. At one point, he was interested in talking to me about buying one of these businesses. And I went into his office in Sydney, and sat there, and after talking to him about the business, he said, “I don’t want to buy your business now, I want to invest with you. I like what you’re talking about. I like the way you’ve done this.” And I said, “Thanks. But I’m still going to sell the business.” And he said, “I will give you some advice. When you sell it, you’re going to have everyone coming out of the woodwork, you’re going to feel like you need to do something.” And then he pointed to his wooden block on his desk. And it was this big wooden block. And it said, “No”. And I think that’s his favorite desk item. And he said, “You’re going to have to say this a lot. And No is your best friend.”
“No is your best friend.”
Especially like, you’ve literally won the business lottery, you know? When people line up for that big payout, usually, they’re not going to win as much as you got paid for something that you were able to create and manage and grow and exit yourself. I mean, it’s a tremendous achievement. But yet, it’s almost like you win but you lose, because you get the money, but now you have to give up your baby.
David: Yeah, yeah, it’s difficult. Because you see your baby still out there, and you have no information about it. And I know, but like, so much less information than you previously did.
You know, for me, I think it was very much about identity too, like, how do I identify myself moving forward, right? Like, I’ve always identified myself as an entrepreneur. But, you know, what does that mean when I’m not running that business actively? And, like, all these questions start to come up in your mind. And I think that’s unrelated to the amount of money. That is very much related to this emotional tie to what we build as entrepreneurs.
James: I think so. I think that’s why I was attracted to coaching other businesses, because I can keep my hand in businesses, even if they’re not mine. In some cases, actually, these days, I do a lot of revenue share deals, so I am kind of in business with them, but it’s still their business. It’s a nice way that I’ve found to satiate that want, that desire to practition. I want to practition, I want to be good at what I do, I don’t want to be a theoretical coach. And when I did sell my business units, luckily, I had other business units left. And I found that the focus on the ones that were left allowed them to rise up. Like, you know, a couple of birds leave the nest, and the ones that were left there got fatter. That was nice.
Of all the things, I actually missed the team the most. We had 65 people at one stage in our business. It was like a big family, we’d pack out a restaurant when we’d meet. I imagine you had a lot of employees. I mean, being a software business, maybe not too many, but you probably had quite a few. Do you do miss the relationship you had with them? Even though you didn’t love managing?
David: Yes, for sure. I mean, we had about 40 people in our office. And I can remember, some of my proudest days are when we did our company barbecue every year. And it’s not like, “Oh, my God, I have so many people working for me.” I was like, wow, these people all trust in what we’re doing. And we’re all pushing towards the same thing. And you get everyone together, like a company barbecue. And we always had fun, of course, and there was great food and whatever else. But like, that is some of my proudest moments, to see all of these people together with their families, with our family of people that we see every day. And that’s very different. Now, we have a much smaller team. And hopefully we continue to grow that team and have great people around us that love what they’re doing. And for me, I thrive on that.
What’s keeping David busy
James: So apart from putting together Unstoppable, what are you actively involved in these days?
David: Yeah, so I still do some angel investing, much less than I used to. A number of years ago, I came to the clear idea that angel investing is not a good way to make money, in general. So, I’ve used it as a way to learn, make connections, do things, but not as an investment strategy. I think that that’s quite difficult.
“Angel investing is not a good way to make money, in general.”
So, I still do that some. I work with a few companies that I’ve made investments into, help them with specific challenges, and then getting more involved in the health and wellness space, both through investments and active in some companies, helping other people that, you know, as, as my book crosses over into that space, what products and services are interesting, we looked at building a technology product, and we haven’t really decided where we’re going to end up with that yet.
James: Could see you doing something like what Dave Asprey is done.
David: Yeah, I mean, I think Dave has done some really interesting work and, you know, built, built a brand around certain aspects of health and wellness and even built bulletproof labs, which I think is a very interesting concept. And I appreciate what Dave is done. And maybe that’s the direction we will go.
James: Just switching topics a little bit, I know we’re moving around, but I literally see this all as one single topic because, for me, they’re interconnected.
If you’re not personally set up right, it’s hard to sustain stuff. I mean, if you’d kept your business for a lot longer, do you think there’s a risk you might have damaged yourself or got to a point in life where you’re less and less happy?
David: That’s a good question. I hoped that that wouldn’t be the case. I was kind of starting on this journey prior to the sale. I got much more into yoga, I did a yoga teacher training, 200-hour training. I did, you know, some of these things to help, like, discover myself and learn about myself, and you said earlier, like, the feelings within our body, right? I think most of us are disconnected from those feelings and sitting with them. So, I was on that process and journey. So, I hoped that I would have continued absent of, you know, what the business was doing. And, you know, again, like I was at that point, not working a tremendous number of hours in the business. So, I don’t think it would have had an effect.
James: Right. Interesting. You know, something else that was fascinating to me is when I was reading through your supplement stack, it’s literally my shopping list of supplements. And I’ve sort of arrived there through wanting to make sure I had good gut health, and I needed to help my bones because of this osteoarthritis. I’ve ended up with the fish oil. I discovered through DNA that I’m not processing B12 or folinic acid properly, so I needed the activated versions. And then I actually, I get my kid to take vitamin D because he doesn’t get outside enough. So, a lot of these supplements you’re recommending, and fiber is also good, if you’re ever feeling like you’re getting a bit stuck up. The other thing that I take is turmeric, because I’m often injuring my bones when I’m surfing. I think I’ve smashed my legs, my feet. Sometimes I hit on the fin or someone else’s board or whatever. And I think it probably helps me heal. And the magnesium spray is good too for torn ligaments and things. So yeah, gosh, all these supplements. You want to talk us through your favorite?
Do THIS prior to supplementation
David: Yeah. So, I think you touched on one of the most important things, which is doing testing prior to supplementation. Now, there’s maybe a few that like, vitamin D, I think the numbers are like, 90 percent of the population is deficient, right? So yeah, I mean, maybe you can just go start taking that. But in general, I think at least some baseline testing to understand both deficiencies as well as how you process things, I think is vitally important. Otherwise, you are both wasting money and time or could possibly be doing damage.
And I want to be doing the most benefit. So, baseline testing one, vitamin D, or specifically D3, right, because that’s the vitamin form of it. Some sort of fish oil. I prefer a krill oil. I like psyllium husk for fiber, it both keeps you regular, but also your gut needs fiber along with probiotics and prebiotics to create all of the bacteria that your gut needs to function well. So, fiber is an important part of that. Psyllium husk is a nice one.
James: A friend of mine got me do eat a cup of oats most mornings. He said, that’s a pretty good way to line your tummy. He said, 90 percent of the way down the track if you do that.
David: Yeah. Yeah, I mean, for me, that’s a little bit carb heavy. So, I’ve tried to find other solutions. But, yeah, for sure. I mean, I think that the challenge is, a lot of people just load that with a bunch of sugar too, right?
James: Yeah, it’s hard to wean yourself off sugar because your body’s craving it, especially if your gut’s deficient, it’s going to want more sugar, right? The bacteria crave it.
David: Yeah. And I think most of us have guts that are not optimal by any stretch, right? And it’s hard to say exactly what optimal is, but it is not operating well, for a lot of people. And we walk around thinking that it’s normal to have gas and bloating and things like that. That shouldn’t be the normal case, right? Like, it’s not that it should never happen. But the normal case should not be that, and we’ve accepted it over time, that that’s just how it is.
And then, I think B12 or a B complex vitamin, I think, is really important. But my biggest frustration when I started on this journey a number of years ago, was like, there’s so many vitamins, right? Like thousands of them you could possibly do, and then different stacks and different brands. And it is so confusing and so difficult. That’s why in the book, I tried to lay out like, five of the most important ones that most people are going to need. And starting there, you get most of the benefit, right? Like when people say, I feel tired, I have brain fog, like most of the time, that’s a deficiency in vitamin D, and B12, B6, whatever. Like, getting those optimal levels will help with lots of other things. Vitamin D3 is a precursor to testosterone and other sex hormones our body uses to generate overnight. And it makes perfect sense, right? Like, we used to be outside all the day. And then during our rest period at night, we used the vitamin D from being outside to generate all sorts of things that the body needed.
James: Nice, yeah, I get my dose of sun every single day with my surf, it is like a reset. You know, as soon as I walk out the front down to the beach, and I’m out there for an hour, two hours sometimes, and I’m just, I don’t know, just there’s something about it, something about immersion in the water as well. And I can see you’re a fan of cold showers and you sort of slipped in there a bit about breathing. And I’ve actually found that’s one of my most recent discoveries.
The magic of breathing
I’ve been through the food, I’ve been through the supplements, I went on to the sleeping, but the next frontier was breathing. And the big change, and it just sounds so simple for me, was just concentrating on breathing through my nose. So yeah, I don’t think I’ve been doing that enough for most of my life and it can fix things like asthma, and it can help you not over breathe, which almost everyone does, apparently, according to a book called The Oxygen Advantage, which is what I read, and was mind blowing.
David: Yeah, I mean, so two things. First, you touched on what I love is being outside, one, and you didn’t refer to it as exercise. You just enjoy being outside doing an activity. I wish more people would think of, “exercise” activities that way and find the things they love, because we don’t do that enough.
But yeah, breathing, I mean, breathing is a magical thing, right? It’s one of the few body functions that is both conscious and unconscious. So, we can mindfully think about it and control it. And if we don’t, it just naturally happens, right? There’s not a lot of other body processes like that. And it has a tremendous amount of power. And most people have forgotten how to breathe, like you said, and it can be as simple as breathing through the nose. Or just, for some people, taking a deep breath, like understanding a deep breath means your stomach expands, your lungs expand, your chest opens. Like, most people walk around all day with their chest kind of slouched over, their stomach held in. Like, that’s not the way to breathe. And just taking a few deep breaths, the way we were meant to, is very powerful. And then there’s much deeper breathing practices that have a tremendous amount of benefit and power. But most people, just taking a deep breath.
James: Yeah, it’s such a critical thing. I even like walking down bare feet. And I do that all year long, which means it’s a little bit nippy in winter in the cold pavement, and it’s a little bit hot in summer. But your feet actually adapt. Because I don’t wear shoes very often. And again, it’s such a simple thing. Like, even when I go to the shops, I’ll put on flip flops, which is a term I’m using for our international audience. But my feet are fairly unrestricted throughout most of their life, and the toes get to spread out and you can earth yourself to the sand and get more sensations.
I just think that change in living, it will be very hard for me to pop back into a suit and tie and drive into the city for a corporate-style job. I think that’s just, it’s so far from my reality. But I know a lot of people listening to this are doing that right now, from the emails I get, the letters that I get, and people who end up joining SuperFastBusiness membership. A lot of people want help to make the change. So hopefully, this conversation I’m having with David is very inspiring to see, you know, there is a light at the end of the tunnel. It’s not an oncoming train. If you’re in the grind, if you’re doing the hard hours, we’ve both been there. We’ve put in the work, we’ve both been on a journey by the sound of it, a new sort of a health focus and a life focus. And I imagine you’re just a happier person to be around with friends and family, right? People who interact with you, they may say, “Oh, gosh, David, you’re different than you used to be.”
David: Yeah, people do say that. I think in some areas, maybe not as positively. But for sure. In terms of my attitude, how I deal with the kids, my patience, all of those things are so much better than they used to be. And I’ve started to notice it, which is odd. But before, people are like, David, what’s going on? Like, you seem better.” Like, it’s this weird thing that people ask.
But yeah, I mean, I think that you know, my goal in life is to find the optimal intersection between longevity and health. Right? Like I don’t want to live a long time. I want to live my best life for the longest time, right? So being able to move and enjoy life and get up and out of a chair and like, you know, all of those things that relate to long-term health, that’s what I want, compared to just living until some age of whatever.
“Find the optimal intersection between longevity and health.”
James: Yeah. Well, I think your book’s going to be a fantastic read for people in our audience. Do you have distribution timelines, etc.?
David: Yeah, so we’re going to be launching March, April time frame. Right now, UnstoppableBook.com, you can sign up to get an email as soon as it’s ready, and the pre-order on Amazon. But yeah, I mean, we’re really excited about where we’ve ended up. And I never would have expected to write a book. Like, if you asked me a few years ago, I’d say absolutely not. But it’s been a great journey, a lot of learning, learning a new industry, which has been very interesting. I knew nothing about publishing and writing and any of these things. So, it’s been great.
Most important takeaway
James: Fantastic. All right. Well, that has been really terrific. Now, just in summary, what would you say would be the most important thing that someone should be taking away from a discussion like this? What would you have hoped to have made an impact on?
David: I think the most important thing in my mind is just understanding that optimization is possible outside of business. So, applying that to your life, your health, all of the things outside of business, relationships, right? And it can be a very positive thing. And understanding that the most important piece of that is optimization is personal, right? So, what we want to feel optimal with, or how we want to be healthy is a very personal decision. And each of us are on a different journey, but we are on a journey and we can make those decisions consciously or unconsciously. And I would urge people to make conscious decisions towards improving their life, their relationships and their health, compared to just letting it happen.
“Optimization is possible outside of business.”
James: Perfect. Well, thank you so much for sharing. We’ve got a lot in common except I think you’ve had a significantly better payout for your business, which is great and just fantastic. With your age, and your health and your track record, I’m sure your life’s going to be fantastic. And now you’ve got a big contribution to helping other people, especially through publishing information. So, David, I really appreciate you coming and sharing.
David: Thanks, James, for having me.
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